* If your Arch image is on a USB key or drive, run "mount /dev/sdb1 mnt" (replacing /dev/sdb1 with the identifier of your USB drive according to ChromeOS). Then run "mount mnt/arch.img mnt2" (replacing arch.img with the name of your Arch image).

* If your Arch image is on a USB key or drive, run "mount /dev/sdb1 mnt" (replacing /dev/sdb1 with the identifier of your USB drive according to ChromeOS). Then run "mount mnt/arch.img mnt2" (replacing arch.img with the name of your Arch image).

Installing Arch onto an Acer C7 Chromebook

At present, Arch runs well on the C7, however most testing has been done with stock i686 ChromeOS kernels. "Patches welcome" when it comes to x86_64 Chromium kernels or completely custom ones.

Warning:*BACK UP YOUR DATA.*

Seriously. All of it. Somewhere *other* than on the device - the entire data partition will be purged a couple times over during the install process. USB keys, Google Drive, printed paper messages stored in bottles, something.

Enabling Dev Mode

First step is to enable Dev mode on the system so we can run some unsigned code. This will wipe all your data!

Now press Template:Keypress (there's no prompt). It will ask you to confirm, then the system will reboot into dev-mode.

Dev Mode will always show the scary boot screen and you'll need to press Template:Keypress or wait 30 seconds to continue booting.

Note: If you ever need to hard reset, press the Template:Keypress combo. This will hard reset the system much like the small reset buttons on the front of tower PCs. The same warnings as on towers apply - the OS has no chance to save itself from this, and data loss is possible. You've been warned.

Install ChrUbuntu

While it sounds completely backwards to install Ubuntu on our Chromebook just to install Arch, at present it's the most automated and safe way. Scripts are in work-in-progress stages to try mashing the ChrUbuntu installer with arch-bootstrap; stay tuned for details if they arrive.

After enabling dev mode on your Chromebook, boot to the ChromeOS setup screen. Set keyboard layout, language, and connect to a network. Do *not* log in to an account.

Let Ubuntu's installer do its thing. You'll get asked a few setup-related questions along the way, it's safe to just hit Template:Keypress for everything as we'll never let Ubuntu see light of day.

While that installs, let's install Arch on our spare *nix box!

Note: When the installer finishes, it will ask you to press Template:Keypress to reboot. DO NOT DO THIS. Instead hit Template:Keypress to drop back to a shell. You have been warned.

Create Image File

First we need to create an Arch Image to do things with. This can be done an any *nix box.

# truncate -s 1G arch.img

Convert Image To A Partition

Convert image to a ext4 filesystem.

# mkfs.ext4 -m 1 arch.img

Mount image to install to

# mkdir /mnt/arch_install
# mount arch.img /mnt/arch_install

Install Arch onto this new image

At this point, run through the Installation Guide as you normally would. I strongly recommend doing this from a system with the Arch install scripts package installed; while this is a doable process with misc. *nix systems (many of such processes are well documented here on the Wiki), it's going to be much smoother with the install scripts.

For example,

# pacstrap /mnt/arch_install base base-devel --arch i686

Note: The `--arch i686` part is important if you're on an x86_64 system. As ChrUbuntu does not support 64 bit with the C7 currently. If you want to boot x86_64, you will need to install a different kernel detailed later.

When setting up fstab, you'll need to mount "/dev/sda7" at "/". UUIDs aren't really an option here as data is about to get sorted all over the place.

Copy Arch Image To C7

Here's where things start to become a mess. By now you should have a ready-to-go Ubuntu install that you did not reboot into yet (meaning you're back at the bash shell in ChromeOS), and a ready-to-go Arch install on the arch.img file. You'll need to find a way to get this arch.img file to the Chromebook - be it a USB HDD, uploading it somewhere, SSHFS, whatever, make it happen.

Copy the Arch image to the Chromebook.

Create working directories.

mkdir mnt mnt2 mnt3 backup

If your Arch image is on a USB key or drive, run "mount /dev/sdb1 mnt" (replacing /dev/sdb1 with the identifier of your USB drive according to ChromeOS). Then run "mount mnt/arch.img mnt2" (replacing arch.img with the name of your Arch image).

Finishing up =

Reboot and enjoy your Arch install! Note that ChrUbuntu's installer only told cgpt to boot to the Linux partition one time, so if anything is hosed, a reboot will send you back to ChromeOS. If all went well and you are happy with everything, you can reboot to ChromeOS, drop to the Template:Keypress console, and run a `sudo cgpt add -i 6 -P 5 -S 1 /dev/sda` to make the Chromebook always boot Arch.